Smart people and wise people - <AUTHOR> "When I was a kid, my father told me there are two kinds of people in the world: smart people and wise people. Smart people learn from their mistakes and wise people learn from somebody else's mistakes." J. Paul and B. Moynihan, "What I learn losing a million dollars?"
This is how humankind works, using the process of trial and error. However, errors, losses and mistakes are still stigmatized in some countries.
That is why I would like to create a website, inspired by the setup (https://usesthis.com), where everybody, entrepreneurs, scientists, writers, musicians etc could write about something they failed to do, in order to help the world being wiser.
To start this, I would need a couple of interviews. So, if you're interested, you can send me your testimonials at firstname.lastname@example.com using the following format :
Who are you, and what do you do?
What did you try?
How would you describe your loss?
What did you learn?
Thank you very much,
Cheers. <comment><USER2> Who are you, and what do you do?

I live in middle europe. I am working in IT currently networking area but my responsiblities are: contracts and management of task automation system.

What did you try?

Few years ago i have tried to develop some sort of cloud analytical service for HR agencies.

How would you describe your loss?

Service stucked somewhere at the middle since i had other personall and work tasks, responsibilities, opportunities. This was only side project. My main loss was missed opportunity since i had potentially paid customer with request for demo or trial accout. Other losses were mainly time and effort (not so much money to hurt me).

What did you learn?

tl;dr: have a money to pay other people in an effort to avoid own overhelming.

Long explanation:

My learning experience was quite a fundamental business practice: I have to surround with people with same attitude or at least with exitement for the thing. I found out that good firends have full time job,families,hobbies. They want to help me but not at so deep level (only from-time-to-time during weekends,what is enough for building viable product).

Other people who have skills and know-how,has lot of other work and own opportunities. So they are thinking what worth for them in terms of money.

Does it mean, if you pay me more than i have from X, i will give you my time. Quite logic for me. Now i have the same mindset.

Since I have limited budget i tried to do most critical tasks on my own, but it overloaded me.

I found out that beside of money, social network is also very important. If i would know people who know other people, it could be easier to find right people.

Now i changed my approach and i am cooperating with some smart guys with entreprenurial mindset and we splitted responsibilities with deep communication and feedback giving. One is focusing on business part,other on hardware part,another on software. It seems to be working. After current project we have planned another.

Out-of-topic: Funny thing for me, Year ago I was thinking about exactly the same thing, but i put it into my idea-draft-file and didn't realize it. I wish you good luck with this project. You will have at least one reader :-)

Note2: you didn't ask for any advice in regards to your idea, but i would like to share my some of my thougts from my own development of this kind of idea. This is some sort of creative business where stories are selling. It's important to have good storytelling baseline. Because only story which connect can bring value. People are reading and recommend (this is important for this kind of project/business) only good story which touch them. But not all of us are good storytellers from nature. I think every "sucess story" has been revised and little bit improved to hit and cobnect right people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Selmat!

Why not start it this together? I would really appreciate to ear from from you!

You can contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

Cheers</comment></comment>


Privacy and Coherence - <AUTHOR> https://cri.dev/posts/2020-05-12-Privacy-and-Coherence/ <comment><AUTHOR> Being more aware of what you share while browsing the web comes with experience and can be seen as a journey.

No tools will help if you don't change your approach and habits.

My main motivation to be more privacy-aware was to be more coherent with my way of thinking regarding to ethical use of personal data shared with a third- party.

This is a story about my approach and tools I use, feedback and suggestions are welcome.</comment>


California AG Threatens Legal Action Against Uber Over Self-Driving Cars - <AUTHOR> http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/12/16/state-attorney-general-threatens-legal-action-against-uber-over-self-driving-cars/ <comment><USER2> It looks like Uber is pretty clearly in the right here. The DMV's own site ([https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/bkgd](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/bkgd)) makes it pretty clear that the regulations only apply when there isn't an operator performing "active physical control or monitoring".

</comment><comment><USER3> An unforced error on Ubers part. Their attitude that they can flout regulations and get things changed later could ruin them if they are unlucky.</comment>


Three Hours Longer, the Pandemic Workday Has Obliterated Work-Life Balance - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Original article is [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/working-f...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/working- from-home-in-covid-era-means-three-more-hours-on-the-job) But the url is too long</comment>


Bill Gates on Saving Babies, Educating Kids, and Picking a Major - <AUTHOR> https://www.xconomy.com/boston/2018/04/27/bill-gates-on-saving-babies-educating-kids-and-picking-a-major/ <comment><USER2> My kids are experiencing Common Core in a SF bay area school.

I think it's an improvement. Anecdotes from parents of older teens talk about a period of teaching where students were encouraged to write about how they _feel_ about something -- now they're encouraged to write evidence based essays.

Some of the common core math books are terrible, but I think the publisher was terrible before common core (I'm looking at you Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). cpm.org seems much better.

When I went through math in high school there wasn't as much emphasis on how you know something ... now kids have to demonstrate that they can explain it.

We won't know for sure how effective these changes were until more of these kids are in the workforce, voting population, politics, etc.

<comment><USER3> A friend's daughter is 6 or 7 and she already intuitively understands math in certain ways, such as how to add two very large numbers in your head, that I didn't understand until college. Only one anecdote, but Common Core seems to be working for math if she is the new norm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The goal should not be to replace public schools with charters schools, but work with public schools to fill every other gap in the school day (i.e. 3pm-6pm) and school year (i.e. summer, holidays) with additional MOOC assisted tutoring for those who want it.

[https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time- pro...](https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-programs/out- of-school-programs-case-studies/a/alearns-summer-math-program)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the best designed news websites? - <AUTHOR>

In terms of visual design and graphics what are some of the best looking / modern news websites on the web today?<p>Also are there any news websites that get the balance between ads and content right in terms of layout and graphic design? <comment><USER2> I really don't like most news sites. The average site like Guardian or Fox News is just "meh." CNN's "above the fold" is okay, having image thumbnailed stories and then a text-heavy list on the left side. That said, I don't actually "like" it. The pictures don't actually convey what the story is about, just a general "Oh, hey, dude standing in front of fire. And an Osama story." But the layout itself isn't bad.

Is there any reason the NY Times doesn't recreate their front page on the website? I mean, the "top fold" concept ("everyone, this is the big story,") is pretty much directly applicable to the web, after all.

The "blog" approach is wearing thin, (especially among aggregators) and the "top rotator" that so many sites use is pointless at best, and goddamn annoying usually.

But, all of that said, Google News is my homepage. newsmap.jp is no stranger to my browser either. Maybe I'm a sucker for flash (the concept, not the tech,) but allowing me to select which sections I'm seeing, color-coded, and size/coverage adjusted, just makes sense to me.I wish it also translated too. I'd love to be able to get a better idea of foreign coverage from it.

Wow, this whole wall of text, and I guess my point is "the best anyone has done so far, is in not being a COMPLETE pain in my ass." Sorry.

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually like the german site <http://www.spiegel.de/> . News website design has gone a completely different path in germany and i think this path is more weblike, it's a stream and feed of news. The way news sites are designed everywhere else is too cluttered for me.

Other examples: <http://www.zeit.de/> <http://sueddeutsche.de/>

</comment><comment><USER4> The Los Angeles Times is one of the best- <http://latimes.com> The Guardian is good too- <http://guardian.co.uk>

Drop me a line if you're working on anything newspaper or journalism related and you'd like to chat about it- my username at google mail.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.lainformacion.com></comment>


Essential .NET – Designing C# 7 - <AUTHOR> https://msdn.microsoft.com/magazine/mt595758 <comment><USER2> C# is starting to look more like Go than Java.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing....

<comment><USER3> C# hasn't looked like Java since probably version 3. Standard idiomatic C# code looks more like dynamic scripting language with each new version, especially v4 and v5. Comparisons to Java are outdated.

I think C# is a great language and wish it was more popular than it is. Shame it's so tied to Windows and .NET.</comment></comment>


A Breakthrough Cure for Ebola - <AUTHOR> http://genome.fieldofscience.com/2010/05/breakthrough-cure-for-ebola.html <comment><USER2> The problem with Ebola is not really the cure. It's the factors around the disease that make it very difficult to cure.

First of all, Ebola is very similar to malaria. In all the areas that Ebola occurs, malaria also occurs, and it would be impossible for normal people to tell the difference. Malaria is a very common disease and the infected usually just take anti-malarial tablets and wait it out, which I assume they also do for Ebola.

By the time the symptoms diverge away from Malaria - i.e, the blood starts coming out, it's very difficult to cure. The people taking care of the infected person would have already been sick, and the original person would already be pretty close to death, that is unlikely that this treatment will help him.

I'm not sure when the treatment starts getting effective, but the described article starts treatment 30 minutes after the introduction of the virus. This will not happen in the real world. In the real world, treatment is likely going to start when the disease is pretty advanced all round.

Ebola is also a disease that is going to stay in underdeveloped isolated areas. It puts the person in bed so quickly that the person would hardly have a chance to infect anyone in countries with proper hospital systems.

The diagnoses equipment for Ebola are also not so accurate, and the response for it is expensive, so false scares are going to have more of a damage than the actual disease.

<comment><USER3> From the article itself:

 _This is a breakthrough not only because it may give us a cure for an uncurable, incredibly nasty virus, but also because the same method might work for other viruses, and because we have woefully few effective antiviral treatments._

The exciting thing is not that we have a potential cure for a rare[1], exotic[2] virus. The exciting thing is the technique and its potential applicability to other viruses.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks>

[2] Part of the reason they're probably using Ebola is to get DoD funding (ie in the anti-biowarfare space)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, this piece is affected by typical science journalism that hypes up everything a titch. Fundamentally, this treatment is a textbook case of applied RNA interference (RNAi). While it is really awesome to see RNAi used in a medical context (these nano-payloads of RNA are really interesting), all the caveats of RNAi apply.

If the virus has a highly variable DNA sequence, different RNAi sequences will need to be designed, validated, and grown up in lab for each viral strain. Viral strains will need to be identified upon infection so the right RNAi sequences are used, which can increase time until treatment. We won't be seeing this technique used on a highly variable virus like HIV or the common cold anytime soon, because these viruses mutate incredibly quickly within the host.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, typical journalist hype by this hack Steven Salzberg (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salzberg>). Ah, "the Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park"? Well nevermind.

And while yes, RNAi has been around for a while, nothing like this has been done with the technology. This is a breakthrough.

<comment><USER5> Iddo Friedberg has a nice review of the paper as well

[http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2010/05/29/a-cure-for- ebola...](http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2010/05/29/a-cure-for-ebola/)

The key for me is this part

"this is the first time that siRNA treatment has been shown to work in primate models of a human disease."

That's a big deal under any circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating to see that they started with the most interesting virus rather than the most commercially valuable virus. Stopping the common cold is probably worth 100 times more money, but stopping Ebola is more scientifically interesting. Kudos.

<comment><USER7> More power to them. But notice they have defense funding. As the article hints, right now, if someone with Ebola got on a plane to Cairo or Johannesburg, billions of people would die. That's not worth much in the $10 × 1,000,000,000 people way of the common cold, but it will get you enormous government grants and a huge amount of prestige.

<comment><USER8> Unlikely.

I just checked the wikipedia article, and the Ebola virus is not naturally transmitted as an aerosol (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#Transmission>). It is transmitted through bodily fluids, including supertiny droblets but that won't effect more than the ten people closest to the infected person on that plane, and before they have a chance to infect anybody else the worlds medical system will have indentified and dealt with the case.

In addition, the virus kills within 2-21 days, so it is unlikely to have time to spread to that many people from each source.

Therefore, this won't be the new black death, but that won't stop the media from comming all over the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _All known strains of Ebola virus have very high mortality rates, ranging from 25% to 90%, and there is no cure._

This is not entirely true, the _Ebola Reston_ strain is seemingly harmless to human beings.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_ebolavirus>

</comment><comment><USER10> "They report a 100% success rate, although admittedly the test group was very small, just 4 rhesus monkeys.

"This is a breakthrough"

I'd hold off on the word "breakthrough" until

a) there is replication of the result in a larger sample by other investigators

and

b) there are some human trials of the treatment. The technique is interesting, but it needs more study.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

<comment><USER11> b) might take a while. I can't see anyone voluntarily getting infected by Ebola, and there haven't been any outbreaks recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Ebola has very few genes - only 8. One of its genes, called L protein, is responsible for copying the virus itself. Two others, called VP24 and VP35, interfere with the human immune response, making it difficult for our immune system to defeat the virus."

Genomics and nanomeds, now that's amazing!

</comment><comment><USER13> run directly towards the slowest virus, since it has a wounded leg? (sorry, couldn't resist :-)

In all seriousness, though, this is very exciting. I wonder how easily this technique could be adapted to work on other viruses, like HIV.

<comment><USER14> It would probably only work while HIV was active, but not when it hides inside a T cell. (HIV is very unusual in that regard.) It's called "HIV latent reservoir" and it's the reason nothing has worked. This is unlikely to change that.

<comment><USER13> Pardon my ignorance, but if an individual's HIV is 'active' (I'd be curious to know more about the definition of active in this case) does that mean that's the case across every cell of their body, or might some cells be active and others inactive?

<comment><USER14> Active means the virus is either attempting to infect a cell, or copying itself. When it's inactive it just sits in the cell doing nothing.

Some are active, some are not.

I believe it starts with lots of active viruses, then many go dormant, while others continue infecting. Then pretty much all of them go dormant, while slowly activating in small numbers over a long time (20 years even).

It's sort of a war of attrition, the virus kills immunity (T) cells slowly, over time. It's possible to prevent it from killing cells (which will then recover to normal levels), but the virus keeps hiding in other cells.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What are WIMPs, and what makes them such popular dark matter candidates?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/july-2015/miraculous-wimps <comment><USER2> I really don't understand how they interact.

Is it because they are unaffected by electromagnetism that they seldom interact with each other despite being gravitationally attracted to each other? It seems given the sheer amount of it, that the universe should be taking a radiation bath from the past history of insane amounts of dark matter anihilating.

If they don't interact often, then why isn't the Earth's core filled with dark matter?

I'm also curious what particles they decay into.

Also, read this just the other day: [http://www.nature.com/news/did-dark- matter-kill-the-dinosaur...](http://www.nature.com/news/did-dark-matter-kill- the-dinosaurs-1.14839)

/ramble

<comment><USER3> From what I understand about that (probably wrong):

1\. That's about correct. They don't interact at all with electromagnetism so they'll give off no photons or radiation to be detected from that at least. They're not normal baryons so they shouldn't decompose into alpha or beta radiation either. I don't think they have an reactions that would cause anihilation of particles like antimatter and matter. Dark matter isn't antimatter, not sure that you've made that mistake but I've talked to other people who have and once they realized that it made much more sense.

2\. Who would you say it isn't? From what we do know it's affected by gravity and doesn't interact with normal matter or photons. It could be passing through you without you noticing at all. That's one of the reasons that for a long time neutrinos were a big candidate for dark matter because they really don't react with anything at all most of the time (except time apparently).

3\. As am I, assuming they decay anyway.

<comment><USER4> Earth's core cannot be filled with any significant dark matter I think because we know its composition and the calculated weight matches well with the gravity we experience.

Dark matter doesn't collide w/ other non-dark particles usually so it cannot lose momentum so any dark matter would just pass through Earth.

<comment><USER5> Correct, Earth formed through accretion of a disk -- all which happen due to friction. If you have no friction and the velocities of particles are isotropic, then you should get something like a uniform cloud of particles (instead of a protoplanetary disk, which later condenses in planets). I guess the same dynamics apply on the scale of galaxies, which should explain the violation of the expected rotation curve.

It should still be possible that those weakly interacting particles would be captured by some body; if there is enough material (plus some other assumptions?) however, they should behave more like a almost uniform fluid (and not lumps like moons or planets), making it undetectable at small scales.

It'll be interesting to see how this hypothesis pans out.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should I do with my life? - <AUTHOR> Dear HN,
This is not meant to be a criticism of our society. Not a "Wake up, sheeple!" rant. Everybody has their reasons, who am I to judge? It is more about finding a direction which is consistent with my beliefs and since I feel mostly compatible with this community, I thought I might ask here.
I am a male in my early 20s and have been struggling with this question now for years. In my current life situation, I'm able to enter into almost any field. No responsibilities. All doors are open.
I am not interested in maximizing my happiness. I do not care about having a great amount of money or social status. My goal is to have a net positive impact. But I'm not even capable to define what could be "positive". Should I be the one who defines it?
Looking at the job board and ideas of "80,000 Hours" left me unsatisfied (Again, this is about my personal beliefs, not an attack on anyone. If you want to work on AI or become a billionaire or just live in peace with your loved ones, please go ahead). Entering academia and spending 10+ years to establish yourself in an inadequate equilibrium in order to have a small chance of success (my parents work both in this category)? Going into politics? Trading in hedge funds to be able to earn to give... Really? In my opinion it's not effective to work in those categories because a) it is extremely hard to reach the "meritocratic" top and b) if I manage to fight my way up through a flawed system, I will most certainly be corrupted.
Others argue that we should focus on small positive impacts because "when compounded across millions of people, they are powerful". Sure, but just because I don't fly on vacation won't change the fact that billions do. Even mobilizing whole continents to fight against our current climate crisis might not change a thing.
I just don't know what to do with my life. Everything feels like a distraction. My mindset paralyzes and isolates me. Does anyone of you have similar thoughts? <comment><USER2> You can donate to organizations, you don't have to become the next Nelson Mandela, Julian Assange, etc (unless you want to!).

You don't need to donate a ton, even a small amount is enough. Organizations like the EFF have professionals who are trustworthy and do a damn good job.</comment>


Ask HN: How to find freelance sysadmin work - <AUTHOR>

I'm a bored systems admin in Ottawa, Canada. Presently managing 6200+ servers across 16 facilities(mixed environment of Linux - Debian, RHEL, SUSE, Windows - 2003, 2008R2, and Unix - HP-UX, Solaris). My experience is specifically with Linux though. This is a government consulting gig but painfully boring.
I'm looking to take on some spare work managing peoples closet servers and small shop setups; I like helping tune little shops up so they can get more done with limited hardware. Does anyone have any experience finding this type of work?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Come over to the UK and work for us! You're doing what we like to do, except it's all fun and exciting 'n' shit ;-)</comment>


In the US, do you own any of your air space - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights

<comment><AUTHOR> Who owns the air space above your house? Above 500 feet it's the FAA. "Private landowners retain their right to exclusive use of the airspace for the reasonable enjoyment of their property up to 500 feet above their lands."

Do you really own the lower 500 feet?

[http://video.foxnews.com/v/4386758506001/kentucky-man- arrest...](http://video.foxnews.com/v/4386758506001/kentucky-man-arrested- after-shooting-drone-out-of-sky/?playlist_id=2114913880001&intcmp=hphz08)

That man's case is pending.</comment>


Ask YC: Negotiating a job offer - <AUTHOR>

Recently, a friend and I both applied for the same entry level position at a fairly large company. We were both offered the same job with the same benefits package, but the salary I'm being offered is about 65% of what my friend was offered. I was pretty astonished by this, and I'm now looking to negotiate a better offer.
Some background: We're both graduating from the same school, with the same set of degrees. We have almost identical previous job experience. On paper, we're very similar looking candidates.
What gives? How should I approach my recruiter about the discrepancy in our paychecks? Have you ever been able to negotiate a better offer? <comment><USER2> The first rule of negotiation is to not give a shit.

If you care about the job, you risk losing it, if you don't give a shit, you will more often than not walk away with a better deal.

If you're ok with the odds, just tell them that you think the offer is very low based on your research online and after talking to career services at school, along with the fact that you thought the interviews went great and that you have student loans (all great reasons to ask for more money, come up with more). If you got the contact info of your interviewer (not HR, the real person who makes decisions) - email them expressing strong interest in the position.

But, above all, be prepared to walk away at any time, if they think they have you, then they have no incentive to give you more cash.

If this was a startup might advise would be totally different, at that point you're doing a job out of love than just for money :)

<comment><USER3> Speaking from personal experience this is totally true but needs to be investigated more. The whole negotiation system in asian flea markets is based on this. If the recruiters perceive that you want and need this job, then they feel they have the advantage and will low ball you. If they think you're going to walk away and perceive you to be in demand or have other options, then you have turned the tables around.

I had one experience where I felt like I was tired of my job and I wanted a new one and I'm sure that came through my attitude and I was totally lowballed. On a separate occasion I was nonchalant and came with the attitude of why should I work for you guys, the offer was so much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before you approach the recruiter about this I would consider the potential repercussions on your friend for sharing his/her salary information with you.

It could be that your friend is a better negotiator or it could be that there was something on your resumes or in your histories that, while you may consider it minute, was of some importance to this company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Without divulging too much information about this company's hiring process, here's a little more information. The jobs are abroad, so the company looks to hire people in pairs in order to ease the relocation process. We have different recruiters, but our recruiters knew we were both applying for these jobs as a pair.

This might be naive of me, but if I were one of the recruiters, I'd probably assume that the two people being hired would discuss and compare their offers before making a decision.

<comment><USER5> I'd switch to his recruiter:)

<comment><USER6> Recruiters are usually paid a percentage of your starting salary as a commission - it's in their interest to negotiate hard on your behalf. Tho' that your recruiter is screwing himself too is not much comfort...

<comment><USER7> That's true.. but they're only given a tiny percentage of your salary. So, a monthly increase of $200 may go a long way for the OP during the initial stages of starting out in life, but that $200 might only materialise to (say) $20 increase in commission for the recruiter - a deal not worth chasing from the recruiters perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are you a woman? And yea, I know that shouldn't matter but you never know. I'd say the scales just tipped in your favor for negotiations, you know for a fact they are willing to go significantly higher.

Update: Geez guys, down vote the messenger. He asked about salary discrepancy and I happened to ask about one of the top reasons. It's real and it's really not fair, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't ask about it.

<comment><USER9> This was actually the exact comment I was going to make. Especially since the job is overseas, some form of discrimination that would be rare in the U.S. could well be in play here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Did the recruiter contact you with the offer or did the hiring manager? Do you both work through the same recruiter?

Any number of variables could lead to the discrepancy. You're likely being offered positions on different teams with different budgets. As crappy as it sounds, salary offers are often based more on budget than relative worth.

Within a given company, there can be a wide range of recruitment approaches. One recruiter may expect you to haggle more than another. My advice for first- time job seekers is to do one, at most two offer-counter-offer rounds. Remember that in these kinds of negotiations, the relationship is more important than the particular outcome. Being hated on day 1 sucks.

</comment><comment><USER11> Who knows might be a clerical error, contact the HR and tell them that you know the going rate for this position is 60-70K for example, and ask them to explain why you are getting paid so much less

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd recommend you just not fool around with this and be straight. Say hey, you offered me X and I think I can get Y at other companies, will you offer me more or should I go elsewhere? I wouldn't mention your friend at all. There are many people with more $$$ than you, why should you get it? You need to be aware of the current power in the negotiations. The current job market gives the employer a few extra points, but if you are an awesome programmer you may have a lot of offers. Actually having other offers is helpful. This is also a risky "bird in the hand vs two in the bush" kind of a thing.

At least the notes on these should be useful :

[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of- Management/15-665B...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of- Management/15-665BPower-and-NegotiationFall2002/CourseHome/)

[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of- Management/15-067C...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of- Management/15-067Competitive-Decision-Making-and- NegotiationSpring2003/CourseHome/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Having sat on both sides of the recruiting table I can tell you that most companies will pay the market rate to get the right person. Trying to save a few dollars to get someone 'cheap' is usually disastrously expensive. On the other hand, often the correlation between what someone gets paid and how good a fit they are for a job is quite loose.

If this company thinks enough of you to offer you a job then unless they are mad they are prepared to pay market rates to get you on board. You have established that they're prepared to pay ~50% more to get your friend, and there's no obvious discrepancy in your attributes, so there must be room to negotiate.

Having said that (like others have said), whether you get more depends on whether you are prepared to walk away from the job. If they know you're desperate they probably won't offer you more.

</comment><comment><USER14> For immediate negotiating help, I recommend the book You Can Negotiate Anything: [http://www.amazon.com/You-Negotiate-Anything-Herb- Cohen/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/You-Negotiate-Anything-Herb- Cohen/dp/0553281097)

For longer term and more general help with persuasion tactics (which might be used to get you to agree to a lower offer), I recommend Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini: [http://www.amazon.com/Influence- Psychology-Persuasion-Busine...](http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology- Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X/)

You will easily recover the cost of these two books using the knowledge from them.

</comment><comment><USER15> The timeline might be kind of tight, but your best bet might be to interview at another company and get an idea how they value your skillset.

Also, check out glassdoor.com and see if the company has any salary information posted there.

<comment><USER16> I agree. Getting an offer from another company will provide some perspective (as well as an alternative should you decide against the current one).

Also, can you get more info on what "entry-level" means at the company? At IBM (my first job out of college) I started as a band 6 - if you're coming in as band 6 and your friend is coming in as band 7 there will definitely be a discrepancy in salary. (I don't think the offer letter will include this info and you most likely won't find out until your annual review unless you ask.)

At another company I worked a lot depended on how you did in the interview process - I saw people with a couple years experience get hired as SE1 (software engineer 1) or SET (software engineer test) while a new college grad might get hired as a SE2 (software engineer 2) - just because he did better on the (technical) interviews.

So, if possible, find out what your exact position will be and how it compares to your friend.

And finally, the best time to find a job is when you don't need one. It might be worth taking the current job just to get experience and buy time to look around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How badly do you want the job?

If you don't want it that badly, just turn the offer down, because the company has already screwed up once and you're not even working for them yet.

If you want or need the job, try to push your offer up 30% but settle for 20%. This won't put you at the same level as you friend, but take comfort in the fact that he'll be axed before you. At 6 months, quit if you're getting crappy assignments, not learning anything, or otherwise being underestimated; if you're getting good projects and doing good work, negotiate another 15% raise at the end of the year, and another 15% at the end of the year after that, closing the discrepancy.

Do not mention the discrepancy to them. You won't make any friends by doing this, since most companies hate when employees discuss or compare salaries with each other, and you don't want to put your friend's career in jeopardy. If it's that much of a big deal to you, then don't take the job.

<comment><USER18> Walking away doesn't work if all companies are the same (and they are).

As soon as you start negotiating, they'll know you got the info from your friend (these HR people are not dummies even though they don't code :)). Don't tell them though; given them plausible deniability. Say something idiotic like you looked at cost of living and think that this is too low or something; just give them a excuse to up their offer.

Since they like hiring in pairs, you have some pretty good leverage. Go for it, you'll probably succeed.

I learned the hard way that all salary offers are open to negotiation (even if the person making the offer claims that it's not).</comment></comment>


WSL 2 Support is coming to Windows 10 Versions 1903 and 1909 - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl-2-support-is-coming-to-windows-10-versions-1903-and-1909/ <comment><USER2> Can't wait until cuda support is available!</comment>


Nobel Laureates Paul D. Boyer and Jens C. Skou Die at 99 - <AUTHOR> https://cen.acs.org/people/obituaries/Nobel-Laureates-Paul-D-Boyer/96/web/2018/06 <comment><USER2> I've been wanting to do an analysis of lifespans of Nobel vs the rest of the population since they seem to live longer than average.

Of course, you have to be alive to win so there's a survivorship bias but it'd be interesting to see a proper statistical analysis.

<comment><USER3> Rablen and Oswald 2008 beat you to that:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18649962](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18649962)

>Mortality and immortality: the Nobel Prize as an experiment into the effect of status upon longevity.

>Correcting for potential biases, we estimate that winning the Prize, compared to merely being nominated, is associated with between 1 and 2 years of extra longevity [in men].

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of: [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thomas- jefferson...](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thomas-jefferson- and-john-adams-die)

</comment><comment><USER5> May their ATPase keep pumping forever...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%2B/K%2B-ATPase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%2B/K%2B-ATPase)</comment>


PuTTY 0.66 fixes security vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/vuln-ech-overflow.html <comment><USER2> I appreciate the hard work Simon Tatham continues to do on Putty. Has he said anything about the possibility of either signing the Putty executable or at least using HTTPS? Or is he waiting for Let's Encrypt to come on tap?

He even references the threat on that page: "2015-05-19 Malware pretending to be PuTTY." Which would be a lot easier to detect if the software was signed.

<comment><USER3> > signing the Putty executable

But there's a GPG signature file which you can use to verify the download! How? I wouldn't know because I've never bothered. And if I remember correctly, the RSA key is also 1024 bits which is another no-no (this has come up before).

<comment><USER4> Their current release key is RSA 2048: [http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/keys.html](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/keys.html)

<comment><USER5> Which is also not on HTTPS.

I read this "old" piece about PuTTY the other day and it still seems just as absurd:

[https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software- saf...](https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software-safely-is- nearly-impossible/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You don't often see vulnerabilities in Putty, which considering the amount of corporate systems it's used with is quite amazing.

<comment><USER7> I still don't understand why PuTTY got so popular (e.g. why not OpenSSH/Cygwin combo)

<comment><USER8> PuTTY had a great VT100/xterm emulator long before any other free SSH option did. And it's a standalone app, no need for a giant Cygwin install.

<comment><USER9> I believe that the TTSSH extension to Tera Term fulfilled this before PuTTY. However, it was a separate extension to the Tera Term terminal emulator, so it was a bit fiddly to set up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You know what I love about PuTTY? It's been around since the Clinton Administration (debuted in 1998), but it's still only at version 0.66.

What will it take to get a version 1.0? Sentience?

<comment><USER11> My favourite was the roguelike ADoM, which went up to 0.99, then alpha through gamma, then up to gamma 16, for a final version of 0.99gamma16 before tripping over to 1.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> MinTTY in Cygwin is based on the terminal emulation code from PuTTY, is it affected by the same CVE-2015-5309 ?

<comment><USER13> I'd also like to know this, but won't have time to check. There's also many many forks of PuTTY that'll need to be updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > This bug was found with the help of American Fuzzy Lop

</comment><comment><USER15>
      difficulty: fun: Just needs tuits, and not many of them.

What does _tuits_ mean?

<comment><USER16> There's a phrase "get a round tuit" which is a phonetical approxmaton of "get around to it".

[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/round_tuit](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/round_tuit)

<comment><USER17> I've also seen it used as a variation on "intuition."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How do you execute privileged code from this vulnerability (on the client?)? What is the worst case senario?

<comment><USER19> > To exploit a vulnerability in the terminal emulator, an attacker must be > able to insert a carefully crafted escape sequence into the terminal stream. > For a PuTTY SSH session, this must be before encryption, so the attacker > likely needs access to the server you're connecting to. For instance, an > attacker on a multi-user machine that you connect to could trick you into > running cat on a file they control containing a malicious escape sequence. > (Unix write(1) is not a vector for this, if implemented correctly.)

From the sounds of it, an attacker needs to either compromise the machine you intend to ssh into, or mitm before you first ever connect. Once keys are cached you should easily notice if you've been mitmed.

<comment><USER18> Yes, they need to compromise the server but they also need to compromise the client. With both compromised they will have the same execution privileges as the original Putty.exe, then they will need to ROPgadget? If they have both compromised by the heck do they need to use putty?

<comment><USER20> No, they must control the server, and with that they can compromise the client. Or at least this is how I understand it.

<comment><USER21> An attacker might just need to get something to show up into a log file that is then viewed using PuTTY. Always escape attacker-controlled data before logging or displaying it.

<comment><USER18> Okay, but crashing the client isn't the same thing as compromising the client.

<comment><USER21> From the linked page describing the bug:

> This might be exploitable if the attacker could arrange for UCSWIDE to be in > memory somewhere near a sensitive data structure.

Crashes are _very_ frequently capable of being exploited, to the point that every crashing bug should be treated as a security vulnerability. At the very least, it's a DoS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My TtyRec player is PuTTY based <_<. _Updates_.

<comment><USER23> don't forget to restart, as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there anywhere sources of putty available?

<comment><USER25> [http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.h...](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> fuzzy lop seems to be quite handy since recently I saw a post here when they found 10s of bugs in ffmpeg.

<comment><USER27> I think it was more like 1000...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Too bad putty still doesn't support ed25519

<comment><USER29> Looks like ed25519 was added in May 10th, 2015. [1]

         We claim version: SSH-2.0-PuTTY_Snapshot_2015_11_08.b003e5c
         Server version: SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.7p1 Debian-5
         Using SSH protocol version 2
         Doing ECDH key exchange with curve Curve25519 and hash SHA-256
         Host key fingerprint is:
         ssh-ed25519 256 <fingerprint>
         Initialised ChaCha20 client->server encryption
         Initialised Poly1305 client->server MAC algorithm (in ETM mode) (required by cipher)
         Initialised ChaCha20 server->client encryption
         Initialised Poly1305 server->client MAC algorithm (in ETM mode) (required by cipher)

I'm no expert, and this might not be what you are talking about, but to my untrained eye, it does?

Now, to get back on topic, they believe that the attack would already need access to the server.

 _" To exploit a vulnerability in the terminal emulator, an attacker must be able to insert a carefully crafted escape sequence into the terminal stream. For a PuTTY SSH session, this must be before encryption, so the attacker likely needs access to the server you're connecting to. For instance, an attacker on a multi-user machine that you connect to could trick you into running cat on a file they control containing a malicious escape sequence. (Unix write(1) is not a vector for this, if implemented correctly.)"_

[1] [http://tartarus.org/~simon-git/gitweb/?p=putty- wishlist.git;...](http://tartarus.org/~simon-git/gitweb/?p=putty- wishlist.git;a=blob;f=data/ed25519;h=d2d4b994da9245c2521eb25197d4a2632e2708b4;hb=740b9af900e7964fb56f79a08f257e5587c78fb0)

<comment><USER30> Ed25519 and ChaCha20-Poly1305 support are present in Git but not in any released version yet.

<comment><USER31> Looks like there is an automatically-built set of binaries that run off the development branch. Have a look here:

[http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.h...](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Job Search Process Is Broken from Start to Finish - <AUTHOR> http://blog.joinjune.com/the-job-search-process-is-broken-from-start-to-finish

<comment><USER2> Interesting read. It's about time that recruiters are put in their place, the majority are lazy/untalented yet they take 20% cut. It's not right :X (Disclaimer: I'm biased).

<comment><USER3> Recruiters have a place in helping find work, I wouldn't say they need to be put in their place.

<comment><USER2> Nope, their role could be easily removed by technology. Internal hirers are required, recruiters are not

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Searching for a job completely sucks and recruiters are terrible to tech talent. I'm so glad some attention is being aimed at this.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I've had to endure countless terrible recruiters/agencies, to the point that I don't even pick up the phone unless they have been referred by word of mouth - or if I _really_ need the cash ;) And 9/10 times, they haven't even bothered to read your profile, it's just a blind mail shot

<comment><USER5> My experience hasn't been that bad. I don't hit all of the tech buzzwords in my titles, but still the emails are the worst.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've pulled my hair out trying to hire tech talent in the past. This changes the game.</comment>


Typing with Pleasure - <AUTHOR> https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/#machine-side <comment><AUTHOR> I saved the recent "Terminal and Shell Performance" article [1] in the Wiki for my shell [2], and I saw that I had saved this great article on a similar subject (editor lag vs. terminal lag).

 _In this article I examine human- and machine aspects of typing latency ("typing lag") and present experimental data on latency of popular text / code editors. The article is inspired by my work on implementing "zero-latency typing" in IntelliJ IDEA._

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14798211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14798211)

[2] [https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Interactive- Shell](https://github.com/oilshell/oil/wiki/Interactive-Shell)</comment>


Show HN: Dragonboat – a high performance multi-group Raft library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lni/dragonboat <comment><USER2> looks really great</comment>


Why we switched from DynamoDB back to RDS before we even released - <AUTHOR> http://codebarrel.io/blog/2016/8/29/why-we-switched-from-dynamodb-back-to-rds-before-we-even-released <comment><USER2> how do you get support from a dynamodb expert to see if the way you are doing it is the right?</comment>


EU clamps down on Bitcoin, anonymous payments to curb terrorism funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/19/us-france-shoooting-eu-terrorism-funding-idUSKCN0T81BW20151119 <comment><USER2> In the same way that encryption was the 'bad guy' until it was proved the terrorists communicated via unencrypted SMS, this will become a non-story when we see they were financed via HSBC bank transfers.</comment>


War Is A Racket, Major General Smedley Butler (1935) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps one of his best quotes -

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." -Major General Smedley Butler (1935)

</comment><comment><USER3> The man who single handedly stopped a Wall Street coup to overthrow FDR. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot>

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't think will get many upvotes this is a great essay by an fascinating historical character.</comment>


Ask HN: Books or online sources to learn Javascript? - <AUTHOR>

I am learning Javascript for work but do not have a programming background.<p>I was hoping for some suggestions on books or online sources for a beginner. Thanks for the help. <comment><USER2> This is the site I wish I had know about when I started to learn JavaScript: <http://eloquentjavascript.net/>

It's all online and free. There's also a nifty firebug-like console at the bottom of the page.

[edit] You may also want to take a look at [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#toc57) and [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#toc47)</comment>


Starcraft 2 Start Up Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.phonehalo.com/2010/05/starcraft-2-start-up-challenge/

<comment><USER2> Isn't the real Starcraft 2 startup challenge spending launch day intensely focused on how to beat all of your competing startups, who are spending the day playing Starcraft 2? ;)

<comment><USER3> I think the REAL Starcraft 2 startup challenge would be launching a website that provides a service to the Starcraft2 or esports community.

I wonder if there will be someway to hack custom sc2maps to send gamestate information to a web server instead of staying sandboxed in. Providing users with high score information for a competitive custom game or updating their performance in some sort of MMO.

One lowtech solution could be to have bots auto-host official games, send the replay file to the server when the game is complete, parse the replay file and extract player performance, and update the database. Methods that don't involve a bot as a dummy-player wold be ideal, I haven't thought of one yet though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some friends and I have the following Starcraft 2 challenge: We're all going to purchase it, install it and immediately play a game against one another without reading instructions, playing tutorials, or whatever. The first one to figure out how to play the game, wins.

<comment><USER5> That also tests something like innate RTS skill. You could do the same challenge with a FPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> so down, i view it as a team bonding exercise

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Okay, from the website hits there seems to be alot of interest. I'm going to draft up a little website and organize a little tournament. Will post when the site is up.</comment>


Senate Guts Privacy Rules. Will House Follow Suit? - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/congress-debates-reversing-course-decades-consumer-privacy-protections <comment><USER2> What a bunch of sell-out traitors.

Is there no party that values privacy, individual liberty, or the constitution?

I thought these "Senators" took an oath to protect the constitution. From the way they vote, it seems they never even read it!

<comment><USER3> (1) Don't bet on many of them understanding their vote. It was billed as a removal of an unfair restraint on the free market.

(2) Oddly silent were folks like Google, Microsoft, etc. I fully expect to have to pay for privacy, or to have to choose whom I trust with my data: Comcast or Google.

Its a shitty time for privacy, period.

<comment><USER4> I also don't fully understand this. Jumping in to see if someone can clarify.

Here's the text of the bill (it's pretty short): [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-joint- re...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-joint- resolution/34/text)

It looks like all this does is undo an FCC rule from Dec 2, 2016. My understanding is that if this passes, our internet privacy will be the same as it was on Dec 1, 2016.

Am I wrong? Why is this so bad?

<comment><USER5> > Am I wrong? Why is this so bad?

Prior to August 2016, the FTC regulated all aspects of consumer protections. Unfortunately, the FTC has a specific call-out ceding authority to the FCC for certain parts of the regulation of 'common carriers', which ISPs fell into.

AT&T sued and said that the FTC carve-out for common carriers means that the FTC can't regulate _any_ part of their business, not even consumer protections like data privacy. In August, the US Court of Appeals ruled in favor of AT&T, which meant that the FCC would have to enact new rules and would have responsibility for consumer protection with regards to common carriers.

The FCC passed consumer protection rules in October (which came into force in December). The FCC has authority on rulemaking unless there's an explicit congressional action saying otherwise. So along comes the new Republican Senate and they pass this bill to nullify the FCC rules. It's written ambigiously enough that you'll likely need another act of congress to undo it, which would require a Democratic congress / senate / President.

In summary: before August, the FTC protected your data. Since last winter, the FCC was protecting it. If this passes, nobody will be protecting it.

<comment><USER4> Great summary - thanks.

I read into it a bit more. The original FTC suit was brought against AT&T in 2014, but in 2015 the FCC reclassified ISPs as common carriers under Title II. So the 9th Circuit's August ruling just reflected that reclassification by the FCC.

The FCC's new consumer protection rules from last year are much harsher for ISPs than the previous FTC rules, so now there is a two-tiered system of data protection.

Senator Flake suggested in the WSJ that he wants the FCC to come up with consumer protection rules for ISPs that use the FTC's framework. (Source: [https://archive.is/hKz0a](https://archive.is/hKz0a))

 _To protect consumers from these harmful new regulations, I will soon introduce a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to repeal the FCC's flawed privacy rules. While the resolution would eliminate those rules, it would not change the current statutory classification of broadband service or bring ISPs back under FTC jurisdiction. Instead, the resolution would scrap the FCC's newly imposed privacy rules in the hope that it would follow the FTC's successful sensitivity-based framework._

This seems pretty reasonable, but we still need Congress or the FCC to come up with another system that will fill the regulatory gap left by the 2015 rule change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the roll-call vote [1]. Find your Senator. If they voted in agreement with your views, call and congratulate them. If they didn't, call and explain why you're disappointed. Then immediately call your Congressperson.

[1] [https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...](https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=1&vote=00094)

<comment><USER7> TL;DR on the roll-call:

      Yea:    50, all R
      Nay:    46 D, 2 I
      Abstain: 2, all R

EDIT: Thanks, zedpm.

<comment><USER8> Nay: 46 D, 2 I actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you do talk with your representatives, remind them this essentially means their browsing history, and the histories of their families, their constituents, and their constituents families _will_ be available for sale at best, or once collected and sold are highly likely to be in a databreach before long. The aggregate of that information _will_ be used to treat those people differently in some aspect or another.

<comment><USER10> Trying to get caught up on this. How big a difference is this to what Google and Facebook are doing currently?

<comment><USER11> While there are similar practices that Google and Facebook have (eg. tracking your activities outside of their website), this is much more problematic and sinister for a couple reasons:

Access: Many people in this country do not have a choice as to which ISP they use. They are locked in due to anti-competitive practices, rural homes, or some other reason. You can make the choice much more easily not to use a certain website that tracks your behavior.

Cost also comes into play here, as you pay your ISP to deliver service. Google and Facebook are free, because they subsidize their services by selling and collecting data. Your ISP charges you a large amount of money already, and are increasing their own margins through this practice. It would be different if they did something akin to what Amazon did with their Kindles, where you provide the same service with and without tracking, and charge appropriately. The way things are now, you don't have a choice.

Lack of notification: Your data is being collected and sold through an implicit agreement with your ISP, likely entombed in a bunch of fine print that no one ever reads, nor anyone but a lawyer could decode. While this is the case with Google and Facebook, it's pretty much common knowledge that they do this. The carriers and ISPs implemented their tracking under-the-radar, and provided no way for anyone to opt-out.

I'm sure there's a lot more arguments out there, but that's what I have on top of my head right now.

<comment><USER12> Also, FB and Google are much more competent than your local ISP when it comes to security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I won't be surprised if AT&T revives its "Internet Preferences" targeted ads program[1]. Most customers apparently didn't care and were willing to put up with it for a $29/mo discount. AT&T never indicated why they canceled it, but my money is that it was due to the FCC regulations that were put in place.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/09/att-t...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/09/att-to-end-targeted-ads-program-give-all-users-lowest- available-price/)

<comment> et-al Considering that a good number of people used NetZero back in the day, this isn't a stretch. We've come to accept privacy as a luxury service.

<comment><USER14> At least some people used NetZero not because they were willing to tolerate ads, but because it was some way, any way, of getting a net connection. Hell, I tried find way to keep that annoying ad setup from even loading. I thought I was very clever that summer I used an independent PPP program under Linux to get the net connection, but no ads. Of course, that was detected and blocked after a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We need good p2p mesh network applications! Relatively slow, asynchronous, person to person flow of information was, and arguably still is, the foundation of society, and the technology must be capable of fluidly falling back to this capability without dependence on unstable centralized networks!

</comment><comment><USER16> I would have preferred them to vote the other way, but I'm trying to do a reality check here. Given that on HTTPS sites it's just the domain name + timestamp, and that more and more sites are transitioning to HTTPS, is the mere domain name and timestamp really _that_ useful? I can imagine it being useful to know you order pizzas at 7pm Thursdays, but how useful is it actually to know you e.g. browse Amazon 2pm Mondays, or use YouTube 10pm Saturdays, or send emails with Gmail every hour of every day? They have no idea what you're buying or watching or sending. (eBay seems to be the major exception since it's HTTP.)

<comment><USER17> Let's give a few examples of information they could find about you:

Visits nytimes.com, huffingtonpost.com and cnn.com: user is interested in current events and is probably liberal

Visits webmd.com and kaiserpermanente.org: user is probably sick

I'm sure you can extrapolate further. Now let's say I'm a gay person growing up in a conservative house and ads start popping up for all the family members on our shared IP for gay dating sites. That might be problematic for certain people.

<comment><USER16> Okay thanks, let me try to dissect this a bit:

1\. You fall in the category of, "What if <my closest family members or friends> find out private information XYZ about me, based on which domain names I visit? My life would be ruined."

2\. You don't fall in that category.

Group 1 has real fears. For some of them, even knowing whether they're home might be a life threat, and I understand that. But I don't imagine ISPs are fighting so hard just for the sake of targeting group 1; I imagine they might even avoid them if they could, for legal fears. They must be reaping immense benefits from gathering domain name browsing history about group 2 as well, and I assume those in group 2 are still terrified at the thought _personally_ (as opposed to only because they're terrified of what would happen to group 1).

So let's leave the first group aside in this discussion. I'm trying to figure out what the most serious (but realistic) things are that people in group 2 are risking, and how ISPs are reaping profits from them. For example, ID theft or burglary is something that can happen to anybody. How much is your ISP recording & selling when you're home increasing the risk of burglary? etc.

Also: if you think group 1 is the vast majority of people and group 2 is the real minority hear, I'd be interested in hearing that argument as well, since I really don't have data on this (data would be welcome). My current instinct is group 2 is the majority.

<comment><USER17> For the record while I'm for protecting online consumer privacy, I'm not terrified of it being violated either. I was simply giving examples of how it might be problematic.

I work in ad tech, so as a matter of principle I don't have any ad or privacy blockers turned on. But even in my personal life I always keep my blinds open, I don't care if my neighbors see me living my personal life. I also keep all my Facebook posts public, etc.

But I realize that there are all kinds of situations I can and can't imagine where people need more privacy. My own life situation could even change such that I feel the need for more privacy. That's why I believe that people should by default have a right to privacy, but give it away only if they so chose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there a good reason why a representative would vote in favor of this?

<comment><USER19> They read papers prepared by lobbyists, think "makes sense" and vote for it. That's how law making often works.

<comment><USER18> I'm having a hard time imagining a compelling case that the lobbyists could present though. Are most of these representatives just willfully corrupt? I hate to vilify people unduly but it is becoming hard to understand the thought process here.

<comment><USER20> > Are most of these representatives just willfully corrupt?

Yes, but they prefer the terms "lobbying" and "campaign contributions".

While theoretically they are concerned with their constituency so they can keep their job, the big problem with our system is the expense of running campaigns. While serving in congress, our representatives a massive amount of time is spent "dialing for dollars". The parties even require ("encourage") spending time "fundraising".

This makes lobbying easy. Constructing a compelling case isn't necessary. Just promise to _free up their time_ by making various donations to their campaign and/or their party. This is legal as long as there isn't specific _quid pro quo_ , thanks to McDonnell v United States.

John Oliver's overview of the problem: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylomy1Aw9Hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylomy1Aw9Hk)

<comment><USER21> It's illegal for corporations to make campaign donations. _McDonnell_ has nothing to do with that.

<comment><USER20> If the corporation is donating directly, it should be possible to show that the legislation was _quid pro quo_.

I'm sure you're familiar with the numerous ways corporations (and others) add indirection when donating. Especially in the era of "Super PACs".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ask Trump to veto it. He may oblige.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there any way to protect your browsing?

<comment><USER24> VPN outside the US.

<comment><USER25> Note that the NSA openly claims authority to actively snoop on (i.e. not just incidentally record, but deliberately examine) your communications in this case, as your connection appears to be a foreign one. The FBI also has a legal strategy around hacking anyone whose actual location is obscured and has some kind of nexus in the US (as they could be presumed to be "crossing state lines" and thus subject to Federal jurisdiction); I'm not sure exactly how the execution of that shook out so far, but I doubt the story is over in any case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Help out here please. Is the house doing something different/worse than the senate to gut our privacy protections? Not that I'm ok with this crap (and I'm looking into a vpn now) but I hear they could already sell our data to whoever because they gutted Tom Wheeler's plan.

<comment><USER27> The Senate voted. Now is the House's turn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ok trump/republican supporters, please help me understand why this is a good thing.

<comment><USER29> You appear to be another victim of "divide and conquer", and like many of them, perpetuate it. Life is not as simple as you like to believe: Trump/republican supporters may not necessarily think this is a good thing.

<comment><USER28> /r/iamverysmart</comment></comment></comment>


SoftBank's $375M Bet on Pizza Went Bad Fast - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-13/inside-the-firings-at-softbank-s-robot-pizza-startup <comment><USER2> Is there anyone who thinks this is a good idea, let alone with this level of investment? It's clearly a bad idea.

The only way it makes sense would be is softbank had a Robot company that makes the gear and they wanted to fluff the sales up to a couple of hundred million on that company by seeking them to this company</comment>


What software would you pay for? - <AUTHOR>

On the lines of 37signals 1. Product, 2. Price 3. Profit, a question for YC.<p>When every webapps seems to be free, and everybody chasing eyeballs, What software would you pay for, say a subscription fee of 20$ per month. Why? What makes you pay for it, as compared to trying to find a free software, (apart from better functionality)? <comment><USER2> We pay $49.95/month to PayCycle for payroll service. I don't love it, but it does the job reasonably well.

We pay for RHEL on our primary server (indirectly...it's included in the dedicated server we have).

I donate $100/year, or so, to the ICCCF because I love vim.

We sponsored the YAPC::NA because we use Perl extensively.

I've bought a couple of games, and Windows Vista for an HTPC to go with a giant TV my girlfriend bought a few weeks ago.

I pay $14.95 per year for Maxemail, a fax gateway service, which freakin' rules. I send maybe five faxes per year, and receive about twice that many. It's simply wonderful not having to have a phone line and a fax machine sitting around for those few occasions--I have a scanner for signed documents. I've used this service for six or seven or maybe even more years and cannot say enough nice things about it. I tried Efax before Maxemail, but had some sort of issue with using it from Linux, and so I switched almost immediately.

We pay for AdWords and AdBrite and Yahoo search marketing. I dunno if that counts...but I am partly paying for the tools they provide for placing, bidding, and monitoring ad campaigns. We're paying about $3500/month in advertising, these days, though that'll double+ next month when we launch a new product.

We've paid 99designs.com for logo contests...and all have turned out great. They've raised prices several times since I started using them (when it was SitePoint Contests), and it's beginning to annoy me, so I'll try an alternative in the future. It's up to $39 now just to list the contest--some things (like getting a couple of icons drawn) don't even need a prize much bigger than that! They've become too impressed with themselves. This is an area where competition would be welcome...though I wouldn't want to be the company trying to compete solely on price. I'm sure there are other designer- focused communities that can step up to the plate with a better price while still bringing other benefits to the table.

I pay for Emusic. I have the biggest monthly plan they offer and I pay annually, because I love Emusic and have no reason to believe it'll ever disappoint. I've been a subscriber since the first year of operation, because they were the only music service offering DRM-free MP3s that would play on my Linux desktop. Cannot say enough good about Emusic. "A+++ Would buy from again" as they say so eloquently on eBay.

That's all that comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm an open source junkie, so I wouldn't pay money for much of anything. I've "paid" by contributing back (mostly in very small ways) to a lot of projects though.

<comment><USER2> This is a position that I've mellowed on, over the years. I've been working on almost nothing but Open Source software for over ten years now, and I prefer Open Source solutions when such exists (and I find a very large majority of proprietary software distasteful...stuff like Mac OS X, Windows, etc.), but if there's clearly a solution to a problem I'm having, I'll buy it without hesitation.

The annoying thing, to me, isn't that it's not Open Source...it is that most proprietary software is of exceedingly poor quality...and so I find myself regretting it quite often.

For example, there are no Open Source Blu-Ray players, and so my options are three or four simply horrible proprietary products. The best of them is bad, and the worst is intolerable.

But, as an Open Source and proprietary software developer, I'm perfectly happy with our Open Source users never buying our proprietary products--if they're contributing on the mailing lists or sending in a patch or a good bug report now and then, they are paying their way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd pay $20 per month for FFFFOUND, because of the high quality of the community.</comment>


Pirate Bay Founder Guilty of Hacking, Sentenced to Two Years in Prison - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-guilty-of-hacking-sentenced-to-two-years-in-prison-130620/

<comment><USER2> Interesting side track: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_Sweden](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_Sweden) In district court, there's one judge and three lay judges appointed by politicians. I've always found this strange.

<comment><USER3> What is strange with that? This setup are quite common in Civil law[0]. I believe it roughly works the same way at least in the other Scandinavian countries and Germany to.

0: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_\(legal_system\))

<comment><USER2> They're lay people and tend to follow the professional judge. They are often times more biased than professional judges when it comes to high-morals (I have no data supporting this claim, but remember that these people want to judge). There's two levels of indirection from the people (they are elected by elected politicians).

I don't like it. The law is immutable in a trial and should be interpreted by a professional judge. The control mechanism preventing the judge from unfair interpretation should not be amateur, social conservative, middle age men participating in police interest groups on their spare time ("jäv", happened more than once)

Of course, no system is perfect.

<comment><USER4> I did a quick search for jav but none of the results were titled "introduction to jav for americans." Can you explain jav? Is jav the police interest groups?

Police interest group sounds like a a group of tommy tactical types that wear cargo pants, and spend a lot of their time at the range or talking about what they EDC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand, why would he hack a company with tax info? I really cannot think of one good reason. Did he make any public statements about it? Did he do it from his apartment in Cambodia? Why does his apartment in Cambodia enter the story? I am perplexed.

<comment><USER6> He leaked (or someone else with access) some 10k personal identification numbers of people with hidden identities (cops, domestic abuse victims etc).

As far as I can remember form the investigation protocol, he hacked the company/ies when he was in Cambodia. He used one of his computers there if memory serves. He also talked on IRC about the hack when connecting from Cambodia if I recall correctly.

My memory is a bit hazy on where the logs were found, but I think it was on an encrypted partition on one of his computers, IRC logs and putty logs. Or something along those lines. The putty logs matched the connection logs from the hack.

The investigation protocol was 'leaked' on Wikileaks in the begin of the trial. It is in Swedish but the logs are, imo, pretty convincing, suggesting that he was the one/one of the people behind the hack.

This will with all likelihood get appealed to a higher instance.

<comment><USER7> What were his reasons to do this? It seems to be a horrible idea to "leak" identities of domestic abuse victims.

<comment><USER6> If I recall that wasn't clear. The IRC logs were quite the jumbled mess of Meth and hacking discussion. "For the lulz" though I don't believe they used that term.

I do encourage you to check out the investigation protocol, even though most of it is in Swedish, the investigation is very extensive, surprisingly so. It puts the Swedish IT investigators in a very good light, from my amateur perspective.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for the explanation. I'll take a look, but if what you're saying is right then we probably shouldn't consider this case in the context of The Pirate Bay. Being a member of The Pirate Bay team doesn't grant him immunity from any future misdeeds.

<comment><USER6> As far as I can tell the only connection to the TPB trial is that he used the credentials of one of the lawyers involved in TPB case. Mongols comment from earlier in the thread (read it as well! Contains more info):

>One / some of the intrusions have by using the login credentials of Monique Wadsted, lawyer supporting the prosecution in the Pirate Bay trial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who have not seen it yet, the movie about Pirate Bay and its founders is a pretty interesting watch: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8)

</comment><comment><USER9> Has any of the reporting sites a copy of the courts decision? Would prefer reading the actually source rather than third-party reporting.

<comment><USER10> If you can read swedish: [http://minfil.org/W1fccfbdb8/gottfrid.pdf](http://minfil.org/W1fccfbdb8/gottfrid.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Thank you. If I could give you more up votes, I would.

Reading through it, I find some clear difference between what is actually said in media/commenters, and what the police actually found. For example, the 10k records was not a list of people with hidden identity. it was a record of 10k people where some had hidden identity.

As an interesting side note... They have quite few bad spelling errors. I particularly like the "postskanningar" that they found.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Swedish article with more details: [http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article16997376.ab](http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article16997376.ab)

<comment><USER11> Swedish non-tabloid article with more details: [http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/fangelse-for-svartholm- war...](http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/fangelse-for-svartholm- warg_8280980.svd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> hacking and not "infringement"? is this like nailing Capone for "tax evasion" instead of the dozens of brutal gangland murders?

<comment><USER6> Drop the tinfoil hat.

He was found guilty of hacking and spreading personal information. It has nothing to do with TPB case. He hacked into Logica and later leaked protected personal information.

After the PRISM scandal I thought HN would be happy that people who steals and publishes (and possibly uses, though that is not proven in any way) personal information gets put behind bars.

Or are you suggesting that leaking personal identification numbers (that are secret/hidden) of cops, domestic abuse victims etc. is a good thing?

<comment><USER13> Your first sentence is totally unnecessary and detracts from the discussion.

<comment><USER6> You may be right, it was perhaps unnecessary.

However, once you've read a few threads on anything TPB related (though this one is rather tame), it is striking how extremely paranoid comments are. Everything is somehow politically motivated and instigated by USA/MPAA. I am simply very fed up with anakata getting a free pass from people just because he founded TPB and got sued by MPAA and friends.

I don't think people who hacks into government databases and leaks secret information, that could put people at risk, should get any praise. Regardless of past achievements. Nor was there anything substantial evidence that this was a political trial nor that it was related to copyright infringement.

<comment><USER13> I can empathize. Just keep in mind that such comments make it actively more difficult for others to understand your opinion, and the physical act of typing them out makes it more difficult for _you_ to think dispassionately.

As an aside: I honestly don't think caycep's question was supportive of anakata. I can see how you could interpret it that way, but it can also just be an empirical question. Heck, caycep compared anakata to _Al Capone_ , and nobody would argue that Capone's tax evasion was acceptable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to backup a VPS - <AUTHOR>

So I'm doing some projects which aren't beefy enough to live on AWS or Heroku, but do need some backups.<p>What do the HN community use when you want to regularly backup the data on a VPS? Just another VPS in another location, or some sort of special backup plan offered by a provider? Just curious to see what most people do. <comment><USER2> What's the current infrastructure? Do you have a dedicated server, or some smaller VPS's? I manage a few dedicated servers that get resold as VPS servers, and if you'd like to talk infrastructures I'd be happy to help.

Backups depend entirely on the type of service you're running on, but Rsync is a good idea as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you just have some application data that you are looking to back up, it is pretty straight forward to back stuff up to Amazon's S3 or glacier (depending on your usage of said backups). Storage is relatively cheap and the amazon api is pretty when using either s3cmd or boto.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm on Linode and just take advantage of their backup service ([https://www.linode.com/backups/](https://www.linode.com/backups/)). It's pretty much just set it and forget it.

<comment><USER5> I do the same, but I like to have an external backup as well. What if Linode disappears and you need to rebuild on another hosting provider? Small chance I know, but multiple backups never hurt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The simplest solution is to simply rsync the VPS (or just the important data) onto another storage device to which you have access.

</comment><comment><USER7> I rsync to another server which is backed up via CrashPlan.</comment>


Is Facebook.com down? - <AUTHOR> I am not able to reach https://www.facebook.com/ (from The Netherlands). Anyone else having the same issue? Quite interesting.. <comment><USER2> For anyone who cares, here is a list of posts with people saying "Facebook is down":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080671)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080660)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15080038)

</comment><comment><USER3> Up in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

</comment><comment><USER4> Same issue in France

</comment><comment><USER5> Up in Stockholm, SE

</comment><comment> rkuykendall-com Down in NYC, USA.</comment>


First look at Nokia RX-51 also known as Nokia N900 - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobile-review.com/review/nokia-rx51-n900-en.shtml

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who haven't been following closely, this is the first device with phone features using Nokia's new Maemo platform (based on ARM, Debian GNU/Linux, Gnome Mobile, Qt) which will replace Symbian. Qt and the Ovi Store for apps are new compared to previous Maemo releases on the internet tablets.</comment>


Higher Education Bubble May Explode in Taxpayers' Faces - <AUTHOR> http://www.openmarket.org/2012/03/09/higher-education-bubble-may-explode-in-taxpayers-faces/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Openmarketorg+%28OpenMarket.org%29 <comment><USER2> Just a dreadful right wing propaganda piece featuring a big incoherent spew of numbers and some quotes from "experts" who are all card carrying members of the same side of the political echo chamber and then the obligatory hyperbolic shot at Obama, this time for "demonizing" for-profit colleges. Gimme a break.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't trust an article that goes from zero to blockquote in .01 seconds</comment>


reject.ly and rejectly.com are available - <AUTHOR>

What would you build? I am fighting my domain buying habit by putting this here instead of pulling out my credit card <comment><USER2> Seems like a good domain for a single-serving site, at least. Maybe a random selection of major accomplishment paired with someone who rejected it, like the N VCs who have passed on virtually every successful startup.

I've never really been into the "abuse of ccTLDs", especially not weirdly unstable countries like Libya. Although I do have a 3-letter Albanian domain.

At the very least, I'd only do something if I owned xxxx.ly and xxxxly.com like this pair.

(I accumulate a lot of domains -- it was totally worth becoming an OpenSRS reseller so I could manage all that stuff from one place. By pre-funding the account, it's less painful to make impulse buys (I have a commandline tool in my shell to do it, and grab the .com/.net/.org, and hyphenated variants.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, if you are going to operate a .ly domain (I do) then you better have backup .com in the case that it goes away

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Heh. You sound like me. I get too impulsive with my ideas sometimes.

If I had to choose between the two, reject.ly.

Curious to hear your idea :)

</comment><comment><USER3> On second thought, I don't like either domain. You can come up with better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm already building refer.ly

We were talking about it, it just seemed too negative in general to build a brand around that we could really believe in. But its funny...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I'm kind of sick of .ly domains" - Everyone ever</comment>


The first photos shot with a 64-megapixel phone camera - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/8/20770385/realme-xiaomi-64-megapixel-phone-camera-photo-samples <comment><USER2> What a mess, zoom in the full size pictures, so many artefacts and weird visual things going on. It almost looks like how google render buildings in the 3d view of google maps.

I hope they're able to use the raw pixel count for something else but I have no knowledge in that field. Better DoF maybe, better night vision (even though I guess more pixels on the same area means smaller pixels which means less light per pixel).

[https://imgur.com/a/XHvib9t](https://imgur.com/a/XHvib9t)</comment>


Career Makeover: From Actor to Web Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303603904579495623344941760.html

<comment><USER2> This is only moderately interesting, going from Tech Support to Development, I don't think is a great leap. I suspect in the coming years, Mr. Brown's acting and support background will likely get him places other Engineers are somewhat restricted from. He (I assume) has the ability to explain technical details to a non-technical audience, as well as being comfortable in talking in front of a large audience, as well as many other skills he'll pick up along the way.

If engineering is your only skill, I suspect, in the long-run, you'll be pigeon-holed as an engineer, and that will restrict your growth. I say this as a long-time engineer with experience in marketing, PR, customer service, and product management.</comment>


Ask HN: How does sites identify you are in private or incognito mode? - <AUTHOR> I would have thought being in private/incognito mode enables you to browse without being recognized? But I'm seeing more and more sites blocking you stating you are in this mode etc. <comment><USER2> It's more or less a javascript hack. Here's one article on it (I think it's webkit specific though) [https://medium.freecodecamp.org/disabling-browser- incognito-...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/disabling-browser-incognito- check-cc84288e89b3)

If that doesn't work on Edge / Firefox there's likely other "hacky" alternatives (probably something around localstorage or cookies not being writable).

</comment><comment><USER3> private mode often blocks features that could be used for tracking in a way that the site can discover the feature is blocked, e.g. things like localStorage not accepting data.

</comment><comment><USER4> Note that private browsing won't remove every trace of your Internet activities. Any files you save will remain. Private browsing also doesn't do anything to obscure your Web traffic from the server's side. Websites you visit will still have your IP address, and any unencrypted data you send is as susceptible to interception as it would be in a normal browser session. Instead of incognito mode use TOR or at least Firefox...

<comment><AUTHOR> I was using Firefox in private mode when I got blocked. But I'll give TOR a try.

<comment><USER5> That may not work. The TOR proxies are either blocked or using them means solving captchas for every website you would visit. Even google asks you to verify that you are not a robot if you are using TOR.</comment></comment></comment>


Why aeroplane wings aren't dimpled like golf balls - <AUTHOR> http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/q0215.shtml

<comment><USER2> A nice article on two points.

1\. A good explanation of something I had wondered about.

2\. A technical level above "History Channel popularization" but below PhD dissertation. Is it just me or does it seem like articles at this level are very rare?

<comment><USER3> Read carlzimmer.com --- it's very well-written and informative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FTA: However, there do exist other types of devices commonly used on wings that create a similar effect to the dimples used on golf balls. Though these wing devices also create turbulence in order to delay flow separation, the purpose is not to decrease drag but to increase lift. One of the most popular of these devices is the vortex generator.

Upvoted for informing me that a device called a "vortex generator" actually exists.

SWEET.

<comment><USER5> Vortex coolers (Wikipedia it) are, well, cooler.

<comment><USER6> <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Vortex_cooler></comment></comment></comment>


XOXO: crafty makers from the future - <AUTHOR> http://benwerd.com/blog/2012/09/17/xoxo-crafty-makers-from-the-future/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this! Great write-up. I'm seriously impressed by the proposition of XOXO. (Completely scalable concept too - it would be a perfect fit for my home town of Sydney, Australia).</comment>


Kicking Off the New Year with New Droplet Plans - <AUTHOR> https://blog.digitalocean.com/new-droplet-plans/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: They doubled the RAM and increased the SSD storage in all their plans, and added a flexible $15/month plan, and a $240/month and $960/month plans.

If you already had an account at DO you have to resize the droplet yourself. It won't be done automatically "In order to avoid impact on current applications".

</comment><comment><USER3> If we consider the smallest droplet size, Digital Ocean now offers 1 GB RAM/25 GB SSD for $5/mo as opposed to 512 GB RAM/20 GB SSD that it used to offer earlier at the same price.

Linode, however, has been providing a 1 GB RAM/20 GB SSD plan for $5/mo for about a year now.

The new Digital Ocean plans puts its pricing at par with that of Linode. In fact, Digital Ocean is a little bit cheaper than Linode now if you care about the additional 5 GB SSD storage.

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a way to get customers to self-migrate droplets off of hypervisors vulnerable to meltdown/spectre

</comment><comment><USER5> I found this interesting: "Coming Soon: Per-Second Billing"

Spinning up instances for short tasks could be beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good news. Seems they have removed "high-memory droplets"</comment>


EU suppressed results of a study that found piracy doesn't harm sales - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537 <comment><USER2> Quality headline...

European Comission tries to hide study that piracy doesn't harm sales, is foiled by member of European Parliament.

* And technically it seems the study found it harms for Blockbuster movies, helps for games, does negligible harm for books and has no effect on music.

(Going by a German report on it[1])

[1] [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Auswirkungen-von- Rau...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Auswirkungen-von-Raubkopien- EU-Kommission-unterdrueckt-Piraterie-Studie-3837330.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been thinking for a while what would happen and how much money Hollywood could make if they charged $1 for a 1080p film and $2 for 4k, no DRM, just a file download.

I think I'd probably spend a hundred dollars or more straight away if all films were there I loved. I think a lot of people would pay a small amount for each film too. Blurays at $20 is too much and I've no interest in physical copies.

<comment><USER4> Do you really think there are 15X as many people who would buy a move for a dollar than would pay 15 bucks?

<comment><USER5> Yes. I would assume- based on the exponential nature of wealth distribution- that you would get exponentially more people willing to spend as the amount lowers.

<comment><USER4> But 15 dollars is in the reach of relatively modest income people already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> EU had to suppress the report. Because from their absolute point of view piracy harms sales. While the report argues that in fact it is now incorporated with a vanilla sales funnel - people who 'don't pirate' talk to people who 'pirate', and this 'boosts sales' ...

Ultimately, it seems pirated materials are 'free as in beer' ... and as the report concludes - in many cases, pirated films boost sales. To say nothing of the various personalities and corporate interests behind films for example that prosper from bare exposure, product placement, propaganda etc...

Incidentally, the same applies to software. I imagine by this time Adobe has a shadowy but no-less locked down funnel that teens enter when they first torrent and crack Photoshop...

Furthermore, it seems that the concept of piracy is fraught with mixed metaphors and improper comparisons, epitomized by the 'You wouldn't download a bear.' meme. These seem to be spawned by authority trying to leverage some moral sentiment without understanding the inter-relatedness of the cultural scene and the internet generally. Nevertheless this has created a general class of 'law-abiders' or 'normies' who might account for the people who ultimately purchase a product after being referred to it by a pirate.

<comment><USER7> Appreciate a well-expressed comment, but I don't see what "the EU" as such has to gain by suppressing the report. The EU _Commission_ is accused (in [1]) of withholding information in TFA, and I think the evidence is pretty thin here. As the linked post says itself

> _But the EU never shared the report possibly because it determined that > there is no evidence that piracy is a major problem_

Now there might very well be lobbying for changing EU "copyright law"; I don't know, and TFA doesn't tell either.

(Actually, there's no such concept as "copyright" in France/Germany and other European jurisdictions with Code Civil heritage. Is "copyright" a Common Law or US-only concept? I guess with Brexit the only Common Law jurisdiction left in the EU would be Ireland but IANAL).

[1]: [https://edri.org/did-the-eu-commission-hide-a- study/](https://edri.org/did-the-eu-commission-hide-a-study/) _Did the EU Commission hide a study that did not suit their agenda?_

<comment> That-one-thing I will quote here from Julia Reda who got the report.

"At first I was willing to give the Commission the benefit of the doubt that the study had simply fallen through the cracks, since the responsible department underwent significant restructuring in 2014, after the study was commissioned.

However, now all available evidence suggests that the Commission actively chose to ignore the study except for the part that suited their agenda: In an academic article published in 2016, two European Commission officials reported a link between lost sales for blockbusters and illegal downloads of those films. They failed to disclose, however, that the study this was based on also looked at music, ebooks and games, where it found no such connection. On the contrary, in the case of video games, the study found the opposite link, indicating a positive influence of illegal game downloads on legal sales.

That demonstrates that the study wasn't forgotten by the Commission altogether.

They also failed twice to meet the deadline for responding to my freedom of information request.

One cannot avoid the suspicion that the Commission intentionally suppressed the publication of publicly-funded research because the facts discovered were inconvenient to their political agenda."

Tl:dr Hidden on purpose to further their agenda.

EDIT: Sorry source. [http://www.journalismonline.gr/eu-paid-for-a-report-that- con...](http://www.journalismonline.gr/eu-paid-for-a-report-that-concluded- piracy-isnt-harmful-tried-to-hide-the-findings/)

<comment><USER7> I guess I still fail to see the political agenda thing of the EU Commission in this matter. The results were published in the context of movie downloads because that's the only area calling to action according to the study. It's also not clear to me _why_ the EU Commission should suppress discussing a study they themselves ordered, or what their stance in this matter is alleged to be, when there is no material conflict of interest here that I can see. That just doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> See other recent HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15305476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15305476)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm wondering if the study differentiated between analyzing the effect of piracy on large companies with big profit margins versus small companies with thin profit margins.

My conjecture is that piracy would have a stronger negative impact on the latter.

My guess is Piracy doesn't hurt big blockbuster entertainment and software corporations much because of their corporate deals and large profit margins.

But if you limit the study to smaller mom-and-pop musicians/entertainers/actors/performers, small video game development studios, and other small software companies which have thin profit margins,

I think we'd see a noticeable negative impact caused by piracy.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am from a 3rd world country, have been using all things pirated since my birth without ever blinking an eye. But still, I do realize this is morally wrong, and should be discouraged even if it doesn't directly harm sales.</comment>